Sorry my entire site looks like crap. I've had to remove my header and background images, as well as my sidebar badges, thanks to Photobucket, who will get ZERO of my monies. Eventually, I'll deal with broken images in posts.

STARTING 4/8/17: Six Word Saturday is now being hosted by the lovely Debbie at Travel With Intent. If you aren't already following Debbie, please visit her blog for Six Word Saturday and her beautiful photos. I'll continue to participate from time to time but please go to Debbie's for the official posts.

If you aren't receiving email replies to your comments, please see this post.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

In working my way through Six Word Saturday entries, I find myself constantly slowed down and frustrated at blogs that have not only word verification but also comment moderation turned on.

What are they so afraid of? Disagreement? I say a little disagreement is good for the soul. If you're open-minded, you may even learn something. It doesn't mean you have to change your opinion but a dissenting comment may just help you see the other side. Or is it fear of spam/vulgarity? Comments can be deleted! I deal with about a dozen spam comments each week and all it takes is click, checkbox, confirm, done. In the meantime, how many commenters have been discouraged or run off because of the restrictive abilities to comment?

When I see comment moderation enabled, I feel as if I am awaiting judgement. Was my comment good enough? Was I witty/kind/supportive enough? Are my words worthy of your approval?

My anxiety over ridiculous things is no secret around here. I'm afraid of car flags, bagpipes, spiders, death, the crazy guy who lives behind us and the angry guy who lives two doors down. I am also now afraid of rollerblades and ponies. But I'm not the least bit afraid of comments.

I blog for me but I also blog for the feedback. That's the whole point of a blog, is it not? I welcome comments. I want comments. I certainly don't want to do anything to discourage comments. That's why this blog is minus word verification and minus comment moderation. It's also why I do my best to respond by email to every comment left here.

Maybe some day I'll understand why other people put such a fortress up around the ability for their readers to engage in a dialog about their posts.

25 comments:

I have comment moderation on because I try to protect my semi-anonymity. Some people know more about me than I care to share in the blog, so I use it as a means to catch comments that accidentally use a real name or something else I don't want published. But I never do it to restrict what gets posted beyond that.

An interesting thing happens though. I get regular comments that say "don't publish this" that are just notes to me. So, it is like e-mail for the lazy as well:-)

The other reason is to catch spam comments, which I get maybe 2-3 a week of. That actually got so bad at one point last month (like 5 a day) that I turned on the word verification for a day or two to stop it. That worked and I turned that off...but I still moderate all comments to keep the secret stuff out.

I moderate my comments because I have a family member that is rude and hateful and will be a real smartass on my posts and leave nasty comments about those who leave comments for me. So, it's a way to protect the innocent from that person's behavior.

I would much rather not offend those who do comment on my blog than keep that asshole at bay.

Amen, Sistah! I've been keeping a list (oman, I'm showing my weirdness now) of the funny looking freakin' word verifications, and I'm going to make an entry and make up definitions to go with those ..uhm...words.I guess it doesn't really bother me too bad, but I prefer to not have to do the word verification.

I have word verification to keep out the spammers. When I translated a Japanes/Chinese comment the other week it was an invitation to a porn site so I rejected it. (I used a translation package! I can barely cope with English . . . ) A couple of weeks ago I collected a few verification 'words' and wrote a nonsense poem with them ;-)

i dont really get why ppl are always so concerned with how other ppl do what they feel necessary. maybe they aren't afraid of anything. perhaps time has shown them certain things are necessary for THEIR peace of mind.

RoSi - I'd reply by email but you do not have yours enabled. My goal with this post is to understand WHY people feel the need to do these things. And some of the early comments are very helpful - I hadn't considered the anonymity aspect or hurtful spiteful family/acquaintances. See, I'm learning something from comments left by people who feel differently than I do about the subject. I still feel the same but I'm more able to understand why they choose differently.

I'm with you Cate. it irritates me when I leave a comment and they have both, word verification and comment moderation. I do have it set up on mine that if a comment is left on an entry 14 days or older than it has to be moderated because I find that the spam I get is on my older entries for some reason. Thankfully I rarely get spam and rarely get a comment that is hurtful or mean.

To each his or her own. Personally I let all comments go, and I just delete any that are spam. My take is that I have the freedom of speech to blog about anything I want, so I should give any one who wishes to comment that same freedom.

I have seen some rude comments on especially some baby-lost Mom's blogs and some people are so hateful to them. I feel like I can just remove them if I don't like it. I feel that if I am blogging and I accept comments it's just like life I have to take the good with the bad. I do understand why some people have it and I still read there blog cause I know I'm prolly not leaving something upseting.Hope that all made sense. Have a great day !!Caroline

I have a crazy in-law who was constantly writing horrible things in my comments about me/to me on my blog. So I had turned on the "approval" thing for awhile, then I made my blog private. After a week I realized I was punishing myself for her poor behavior and came back to being open and removed the approval.

I don't avoid commenting on blogs just because they have moderation/word verification, but they are annoying. I comment because I have something to say, "sporcel" isn't going to keep me from saying it. I do think it's weird though how the randomly generated "words" are in strings of letters that COULD really be words, though.

I'm okay with comment moderation, though I don't like how it can hamper the "conversation" on some blogs.

Comment moderation + word verification totally bugs me. Interesting that Accidentally Me stopped her heavy duty spam w/WV--for me, I get spam with or without WV. But her post does make me realize maybe some people do have a reason for having both WV and moderation set up.

Seriously. So annoying. I comment moderate anything older than 4 days because otherwise I would never remember how many comments came and how can I read them, LOVE them, if I don't know a new one's come. I used to do it with a 7 day window, but I couldn't keep up with that, so I reduced it to 4. But I agree totally. Can't get much more annoying than the double whammy.

I just now found out what all those crazy letters are for. I don't know if I have it on mine or not. I guess it doesn't matter to me if I have to type in a couple of extra letters to leave a comment. If it cuts down on spam I am all for it. I get spam in my email from other people's blogs. That is irritating.

It sounds like there is an option for everyone's needs on the comment thing, and I guess it's good that those that need to can moderate them. It was interesting to read why some of your commenters use moderation. Too bad some find verification and moderation necessary 'cause it sure is a pain.

I moderate my comments, but only because about half are spam and I don't want any of them getting through, not even for a minute. I hate the word verification, so I don't have that on my blog.

My main reason for moderating, though, is that I want to be sure I see every single comment and have a chance to reply. I know myself, and I know that if comments automatically get posted I won't bother trying to reply.

About Me

It's a blog. I'll probably write stuff in it.
Me, I'm married, no kids, two cats, one boring job. My life isn't that exciting so I like to complicate things with overthinking, health issues, and anxiety attacks. I also enjoy reading, writing, travel (if I could control the anxiety attacks), wine, hockey, and music. And long walks on the beach. And a sugar daddy.